My favorite thing to do when I arrive in a new city is to find the closest local bookstore. Not only are they great spaces for relaxing or meeting people, but they often lead to the discovery of local authors and events and provide a sense of the histories, nuances, and people of the city.

Whether you’re new to Seattle, just passing through, or a local looking for new adventures, the University of Washington Press has an expansive array of books to help you discover our city. They cover everything from Seattle’s intertwined urban and Native histories, the evolution of Seattle’s gay communities, growing up Japanese American during World War II, local activism and civil rights, the plight and reclamation of our river, the history of music in Seattle, of animals, topography, food, art and architecture, and weather! We hope you’ll consider stopping by your indie bookstore and checking for our W logo in the stacks of books.

And once you’re ready, here are some fun places to read while exploring your new city!

News

“The World of a Tiny Insect,” by Zhang Daye, translated by Xiaofei Tian

“Penguins,” edited by Pablo Garcia Borboroglu and P. Dee Boersma

UW Press remembers Leroy (Lee) Soper, longtime member of the advisory board, who passed away on Tuesday, February 2, on the eve of his ninety-second birthday.

The four presses involved in the Mellon University Press Diversity FellowshipProgram are now all actively recruiting for positions (see joint announcement). If you know of excellent candidates, please send them our way (applications due March 15)! Read a piece by UW Press editor in chief and Principal Investigator Larin McLaughlin at the UW Press blog and an interview with the MIT Press editorial director Gita Manaktala at the MIT Press blog.

The Association for Asian Studies has announced the winners of this year’s AAS book prizes. Xiaofei Tian is winner of the Hanan Translation Prize for World of a Tiny Insect. Author Wai-yee Li (one of the translators of Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan and a coauthor of The Letter to Ren An) has won the Levenson Prize (Pre-1900 China) for her latest monograph (published by Harvard Asia Center). Congratulations to our authors and all involved!

P. Dee Boersma, author of Penguins, is a finalist for the prestigious Indianapolis Prize for conservation, sponsored by the Indianapolis Zoological Society (UW Today; Daily). Boersma and the five other finalists have been awarded $10,000 each and the winner will receive $250,000 and a medal. Listen to a recent interview with Boersma about iGalapagos on KUOW’s “The Record,” as well as in National Geographicand Smithsonian.com.

The past 50 years have seen a tremendous arts boom in Seattle, which has given the city not only internationally recognized classical music institutions but also great performance halls to showcase their work and that of visiting artists. In Classical Seattle: Maestros, Impresarios, Virtuosi, and Other Music Makers, Melinda Bargreen documents the lives of prominent figures in the local classical music world. In this guest post, UW Press Senior Designer Thomas Eykemans walks us through his creative process in designing the book’s cover.

This cover design presented a challenge that we frequently encounter: how to visually capture the essence of a rich book full of varied stories, photographs, and personalities in a singular and striking image. Though a collage approach is often tempting, it tends to dilute the composition and lessen the impact of any one image.

I looked to musical notation for inspiration in my early concepts. A musical staff with its clefs, notes, and other symbols provided a rich collection of shapes and forms from which to draw. Upon reflection, however, this direction felt a little cold and detached from the warmth of the people and stories contained within.

It’s a fact: Books make great gifts. They’re easy to wrap, make you look smart, and can transport you to other times and places without you having to leave the comfort of your favorite chair. So, go ahead, give the gift of knowledge. (Side effects may include curiosity and an increased appreciation of beauty.) Whether you’re shopping for history buffs, arts and culture fans, or nature lovers, we’ve got you covered.

To help you in your gift hunting efforts, don’t miss our Holiday Sale 2015. From now until December 31, 2015, get 40% off your favorite University of Washington Press titles with promo code WHLD. Questions? Contact Rachael Levay at remann [at] uw [dot] edu.

Check out our recommendations for the bibliophiles in your life, along with suggested gift pairings:

“Williams does a marvelous job of evoking the cityscape that used to be. He clues us in to the spirit of civic ambition that drove Seattle’s geographical transformations. He methodically chronicles the stages by which its regrade, canal and landfill projects were accomplished. And he’s meticulous about placing his readers on present-day street corners where they can, with some sleight of mind, glimpse the hills, lake shores and tide flats that vanished.”—Michael Upchurch,Seattle Times

“Melinda Bargreen’s Classical Seattle is a who’s who of the city’s classical-music scene over the past half-century, an entertaining recapitulation of interviews she did while serving as the music critic for The Seattle Times and writing for other publications.”—Ellen Emry Heltzel, Seattle Times

This groundbreaking study of Black women’s participation in comic art includes interviews with artists and writers and suggests that the treatment of the Black female subject in sequential art says much about the place of people of African descent in national ideology in the United States and abroad.

Pair it with: A collector’s edition of a beloved comic or graphic novel

“[T]his is a well-researched, richly detailed history of trout and trout fishing in the Mountain West that, as the author promises, ‘overturns the biggest fish story ever told.'”—John Gierach, Wall Street Journal

“A measure of any book is whether it makes you think beyond its pages, and Bike Battles did just that for me. My dad used to tell me that if I got only one thing out of a book-an interesting fact, a point of view I hadn’t previously considered, something helpful to my life or just entertainment-the book was worth its cover price. By that standard Bike Battles is a bargain. It allowed me to see the last 150 years of riding in America like a mosaic on the wall. I won’t look at parked cars the same way again. The book ought to give today’s bicycle advocates a sense of their place in history and make them proud to continue the battle.”—Grant Petersen, Wall Street Journal

Raymond shows how, during the Civil Rights Movement, a handful of celebrities risked their careers by crusading for racial equality, and forged the role of celebrity in American political culture with a focus on the “Leading Six” trailblazers—Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dick Gregory, and Sidney Poitier.

Pair it with: The gift of solidarity in the form of a donation to a civil rights organization in the recipient’s name